Shreveport Times January 30, 2005
Recruiters looking for future soldiers
By John Andrew Prime
The latest deployment of soldiers isn't to sandy outposts in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Instead, the boots are on the ground in the nation's schools and shopping malls, as military planners try to remedy a decline in the numbers of new soldiers entering the ranks and those deciding to re-enlist.
But those new recruiters are too late to catch Green Oaks High School seniors Carl Tidwell, 18, and Jeremy Draper, 17.
Both have already signed on the dotted line, bound for basic training in South Carolina after they graduate in May.
"I'm trying to make something out of my life," said Tidwell, who cited college tuition as the lure that caught his eye. "I don't want to be here all of my life."
Like Tidwell, Draper has an eye on generous tuition breaks Louisiana offers recruits in addition to Montgomery GI Bill and other incentives that are national in scope.
"Before I joined, I weighed my options," Draper said. "The National Guard offered me the best deal for college."
But unlike Tidwell, who learned about the Army from a friend in service and then went to visit a recruiter, Draper has spent the last four years in Green Oaks' Army Junior ROTC, which has prepared him for the military life and given him an additional goal.
"I want to better myself," he said. "The ROTC has taught me to be a leader. I want to be advanced that much more by joining the Guard."
These two Shreveporters, each of whom gravely weighed the odds of getting hurt or killed in a foreign war before signing up, represent the challenge and the promise facing the National Guard Bureau, which found itself leaving fiscal year 2004 with an almost 7,000-recruit shortfall - 13 percent - from its goal of 56,000.
One will be totally new to the military, the other somewhat familiar with the discipline and traditions within a uniform. Before the war in Iraq intensified last year, they made up half of all recruits, with the rest seasoned veterans leaving active duty and enlisting to add time in service, retention benefits and the like. But now the near-certainty of returning to a combat zone after facing the fire once, as well as other factors, are skewing the balance. New recruits now make up 65 percent of the tally.
"We used to get half our guys from 'prior service,'" said Mark Allen, a retired Air Force colonel who now is the chief of external affairs for the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va. He said soldiers leaving the service and joining the Guard kept their experience and skills in the military but had a lower tempo and more time with families and a chance to carve out careers. "Now, if you're in the Army and thinking of getting out, and you don't want a high tempo, would you want to go in the Guard now?"
That's where the new recruiters come in. Originally scheduled to start hitting offices around the country in February, "they've already started," Allen said.
"We've added 1,400 recruiting and retention NCOs nationally, and we had 2,700 already. Bear in mind that's our first increase since 1989, and we've been successful in meeting our goals up to now."
The new recruiters won't just stay in their offices helping with paperwork, though that will be a major help, Allen said. The new recruiters will be boots-on-ground, visiting schools, dropping by prospective recruits' houses to reassure worried parents and getting hands-on with the community.
"Guys are coming on all the time," Allen said. "We're training them, getting them on, and so we think by end of our (current) fiscal year we'll be back up to strength."
In addition, new incentives are being offered. These include:
-- A bonus of up to $10,000 for non-prior service enlistees, with the highest bonuses going to people who agree to train in mission critical areas.
-- A bonus of $15,000 for prior-service enlistees.
-- A student loan repayment program offering up to $20,000 to enlistees with no prior service.
-- $6,000 bonuses for newly commissioned officers and warrant officers and for officers moving to the Guard from active duty.
-- A $2,000 bonus for soldiers who agree to re-train in critical skills areas.
The bonuses are tax-free if the re-enlistment is done while the service member is deployed.
The changes have led to greater interest in the Guard as a career for students trying to grab a stake in life, said retired U.S. Army Maj. Horace Charles, who has been Green Oaks' ROTC instructor for four years.
"There's more interest, definitely," said Charles, who retired from the Army in 1996 after 20 years' service and four additional years in ROTC instruction in the Houston area.
He said he still sees a high degree of patriotism in the students he teaches, both in Junior ROTC and in the school's "Life Skills" program.
"But there's not only the patriotism that leads them to join," he said. "The military uses a word most parts of society can't: 'Guarantee.' They keep their word. They give you your orders in hand, and you go there. Rank and pay, guaranteed. That's what the military has going for it."
John Pike, founder of the Washington-area GlobalSecurity.Org, a strategic analysis group, says the Guard is responding to unprecedented challenges and that only time may tell whether it will be able to rebound or be forced to change to meet the times.
"I don't think money is the answer," said Pike, who said restructuring tours to bring troops home sooner may not be the answer either if the military plans to use fewer Guard and Reserve forces and more active duty in coming years, as has been announced.
"These people do not sign up to fight these long tours," Pike said. "It's not World War II. The Army's answer is that this is temporary and there will be a big reserve component in this year's rotation, but that by the end of next year they will be able to do it all with active components and the crisis will pass.
"That may be true. It's possible there will be just a year or two where the Guard will be in pain and not make its recruiting goals, and pick up the pieces a couple of years down the road."
The dilemma, he said, is that the Guard is a vital part of the nation's war-fighting, but its use has been uneven through history.
"The Guard has been an essential component in past wars, if you go back to World War I and, to a lesser extent, Korea," he said. "They dodged Vietnam and had a big identity crisis around the Gulf War.
"On the one hand, they're a historic part of our war-fighting capability. On the other hand, should we just leave them home, with a homeland security mission? I'm not sure what the conclusion is going to be."
Regardless of the challenges, the two Green Oaks seniors plan to do their best in uniform.
"I'm going to go out there and make it," Tidwell said. "I'm determined. I'm not going to let anything stop me.
Draper said the bloody conflict in Iraq "made me think twice. But I live in Shreveport - you can step off your front porch and something can happen to you. If I go, I have to believe God will be with me."
He said his family support his decision, with some trepidation.
"They have their worries about this war, but they think I've made the right decision. They're proud of me."
© Copyright 2005, Shreveport Times
